Saturday, October 27, 2012

"In Hours of Autumnal Sleep" Workshop


The story is very dream-like, using lots of poetic language to establish a feeling of eroticism and the passage of time. It seems to be talking about two lovers who may have met in a bar and experienced bliss later in bed. The story, then, may be the dream they create in their love-making.
            One of the best things about the piece is the word choice. You use very specific and descriptive words and phrases like “Your widened palm to flit my lip hushed over.” This fragment flows exactly as the action it suggests: like a hand brushing over a mouth. However, while the poetic language is what carries the story, I think that it may relied upon too much. I found it difficult to follow and felt like the story warranted a few more direct sentences to help me orient myself. As of now, I only see one sentence like this: “The city had erected a false kind of arc, with no animals, with no pairs, and I still found you there.” I found this sentence to be a bit of relief from the rest of sentences and fragments, which, while poignant and descriptive, I sometimes had difficulty understanding what they described. I understand that ambiguity is important to the story, and in a dream-like story ambiguity is vital, but I feel like with a little more direction this first draft will turn into a great later draft.

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